1Feature summary for procmail: 2 + It's less filling (i.e. small) 3 + Very easy to install (rated PG6 :-) 4 + Simple to maintain and configure because 5 all you need is actually only ONE executable (procmail) 6 and ONE configuration file (.procmailrc) 7 + Is event driven (i.e. gets invoked automagically when mail arrives) 8 + Does not use *any* temporary files 9 + Uses standard egrep regular expressions 10 + It poses a very low impact on your system's resources 11 (it's 1.4 times faster than the average /bin/mail in user-cpu 12 time) 13 + Allows for very-easy-to-use yes-no decisions on where the mail 14 should go (can take the size of the mail into consideration) 15 + Also allows for neural-net-type weighted scoring of mails 16 + Filters, delivers and forwards mail *reliably* 17 + Provides a reliable hook (you might even say anchor :-) for any 18 programs or shell scripts you may wish to start upon mail arrival 19 + Performs heroically under even the worst conditions 20 (file system full, out of swap space, process table full, 21 file table full, missing support files, unavailable executables, 22 denied permissions) and tries to deliver the mail somehow anyway 23 + Absolutely undeliverable mail (after trying every trick in the book) 24 will bounce back to the sender (or not, your choice) 25 + Is one of the few mailers to perform reliable mailbox locking across 26 NFS as well (DON'T use NFS mounted mailboxes WITHOUT installing 27 procmail; you may lose valuable mail one day) 28 + Supports five mailfolder standards: single file folders (standard 29 and nonstandard VNIX format), directory folders that contain one file 30 per message, the similar MH directory folders (numbered files), 31 and Maildir directory folders (a multi-directory format that requires 32 no locking) 33 + Native support for /var/spool/mail/b/a/bar type mailspools 34 + Variable assignment and substitution is an extremely complete subset 35 of the standard /bin/sh syntax 36 + Provides a mail log file, which logs all mail arrival, shows 37 in summary whence it came, what it was about, where it went (what 38 folder) and how long (in bytes) it was 39 + Uses this log file to display a wide range of diagnostic and error 40 messages (if something went wrong) 41 + Does not impose *any* limits on line lengths, mail length (as long 42 as memory permits), or the use of any character (any 8-bit character, 43 including '\0' is allowed) in the mail 44 + It has man pages (boy, does it have man pages) 45 + Procmail can be used as a local delivery agent with comsat/biff 46 support (*fully* downwards compatible with /bin/mail); in which case 47 it can heal your system mailbox, if something messes up the 48 permissions 49 + Secure system mailbox handling (contrary to several well known 50 /bin/mail implementations) 51 + Provides for a controlled execution of programs and scripts from 52 the aliases file (i.e. under defined user ids) 53 + Allows you to painlessly shift the system mailboxes into the 54 users' home directories 55 + It runs on virtually all (old and future) operating systems which 56 names start with a 'U' or end in an 'X' :-) (i.e. extremely portable 57 code; POSIX, ANSI C and K&R conforming) 58 + Is clock skew immune (e.g. in the case of NFS mounted mailboxes) 59 + Can be used as a general mailfilter for whole groups of messages 60 (e.g. when called from within sendmail.cf rules) 61 + Can act as an LMTP server for reliable multiple recipient delivery 62 + Works with (among others?) sendmail, ZMailer, smail, MMDF, mailsurr, 63 qmail, and postfix 64 65Feature summary for formail: 66 + Can generate auto-reply headers 67 + Can convert mail into standard mailbox format (so that you can 68 process it with standard mail programs) 69 + Can split up mailboxes into the individual messages 70 + Can split up digests into the individual messages 71 + Can split up saved articles into the individual articles 72 + Can do simple header munging/extraction 73 + Can extract messages from mailboxes 74 + Can recognise duplicate messages 75 76Feature summary for lockfile: 77 + Provides NFS-secure lockfiles to shell script programmers 78 + Gives normal users the ability to lock their system mailbox, 79 regardless of the permissions on the mail-spool directory 80